In peanut harvesting, peanut crop material including vines and attached peanuts generally lie on the ground after digging until the crop material is dried after which the peanut combine is moved through the field such that a rotatively driven pick-up reel engages the lying crop material and lifts and transfers the same upwardly into the crop inlet area of the peanut combine. Conventionally the pick-up reel has been driven at a relatively constant speed by the power take-off associated with the combine irrespective of harvester ground speed and/or crop density.
Field losses are often increased by the constant peripheral speed of the pick-up reel during the harvesting operation. This is generally due to the tine fingers of the pick-up reel snatching and jerking the peanut crop material from the ground during the harvesting operation. Such snatching and jerking often result in the attached peanuts being separated from the vines as the crop material is engaged and picked up and transferred into the inlet area of the combine. In addition, the actual velocity and speed of the tine fingers engaging the crop material often results in the tine fingers actually hitting and knocking the peanuts from the vines during the harvesting operation due in part at least to the fact that the peripheral speed of the tine fingers bears no relations to ground speed and consequently in certain cases the tine fingers may move faster than the peanut crop material being transferred into the peanut combine. In this regard, field losses are still often even greater after the peanut crop material has been inverted for drying on the ground because the vines become tied together and the tines during the harvesting operation tend to pick the peanuts off the vine and other foliage material. It should also be noted that certain varieties of peanut crop material, and weather conditions, also affect field losses since certain conditions can give rise to situations where less force is required to separate the peanuts from associated drying material.
In addition, the conventional manner of driving the pick-up reel of a peanut combine at a generally constant peripheral speed can result in overloading the thrashing and harvesting capacity of the combine in cases where the crop is relatively dense and the ground speed of the harvester is not altered to take such into account. This often results in a decrease in the life of the internal thrashing and harvesting components of the peanut combine not to mention clogging and the possibility that such overload will damage or break certain internal components of the peanut combine. Therefore, it is well appreciated that the life of a peanut combine and the overall quality and efficiency of harvesting can be improved by taking some steps to better control the input of peanut crop material into the harvester during the harvesting operation.